A Sway And A Roll
by Brigdh
Summary: "Tsubaki-hime is expected to be pretty. She is. Being smart was never as important."


Spend enough time on a ship, and you learn to find the rhythms of the ocean. Your legs move to the hills and valleys of the waves without conscious thought. Even storms have patterns, if you can learn them.  
  
A roll and a sway- it's deceptively simple. But it can't be taught. There's a trick to it, a new way of moving that seems impossible until your mind catches it, and then you wonder how you never saw it before.   
  
A roll and a sway. Tsubaki-hime knows it. She's lived so much of her life on this ship that to walk on land seems the challenge, as if the hills move and buck beneath her feet to throw her back to the sea. The ship is her home, her school, her hospital, even her namesake. And it is her cage, built by her body's weakness and her father's power. Wouldn't do to let the princess wander the streets or consort with flower girls. Tsubaki-hime forgot that once. She won't again. She's learned how harsh the ocean can be when you try to walk in your own way.  
  
But she doesn't mind. A roll and a sway and you fit yourself into the life you're given. You do what is expected of you, you want what you have, you learn what you know, you love those you see. And every other step down has a pause before your foot hits the floor.  
  
This is the way it is. Life. The ocean. And you are what life makes you. How can you be something you've never been? How can you want something you didn't even know existed?  
  
Tsubaki-hime is expected to be pretty. She is. Being smart was never as important. She wants that now, that power to understand things, to find the hidden truth. She wants to know what to do. Everyone is dead or gone or changed, and Tsubaki-hime thinks that she will have to follow them or be left alone forever. She doesn't know how to change, she doesn't know where to go, and she doesn't want to die.  
  
She wishes she could change. Throw off who she is and find a new self, hidden deep inside. Someone strong, maybe. And smart enough to know what goes on behind closed doors.   
  
She's seen it happen. She saw Azumi, danced with him, even if he was a little clumsy, and she thought him kind, with eyes the color of fresh spring leaves. And now she's seen Kurosaki Hisoka, who was murdered and reborn. He is not Azumi. Azumi never had blood red scars like lace across his chest, and Azumi would not know how to use a knife so sure and calm on his own hand. Azumi certainly never looked at her with eyes as cold and sharp as cut emeralds, nor spoke of Muraki in a voice that held more hate and pain than she has ever known.   
  
There must be a trick to it. A new way of moving, before you can be someone else. A way to bury the other self so deeply inside that even you wouldn't know it was there. And it could wait, sleeping, until you needed it. Until you needed its strength and anger. A sway and a roll, and who knows who you could become?  
  
A murderer, maybe. A man tall and white, but with hands as red as the heart inside her. Which he'd put there, of course. And his hands must have been stained that day, as bloody as the day he'd killed Kurosaki.   
  
A sway and a roll, and her sensei was fallen forever. White angels didn't have murders in their past. A new pause in his walk, and Tsubaki-hime didn't know who she was anymore. She knows that you are what life makes of you. She knows that it is the people in your life who define you. And she knows that those you love make you who you are.  
  
The only thing she doesn't know is who Muraki is.   
  
And who are you when those you love are dead and gone and changed, when all the life that surrounded you is different? Who are you during the storms, during the new patterns of your life?  
  
Tsubaki-hime thinks that there's a trick to it. A sway and a roll, and she'll fit into this new life as easily as the last one. Her other self is strong and smart, and capable of everything that Tsubaki-hime is not. Her other self knows who sensei is, understands what he's done, can thank him properly for it.   
  
A sway and a roll, to hands as red as blood, as red as roses that were never for her. Tsubaki-hime thinks that she's got the trick of it now. 


End file.
